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Day 25 - KWM 2024 This Is Not An Advent Calendar - G&M Ardmore 1997 KWM Cask

Posted on January 30, 2025

Merry Christmas! Day 25 — G&M CC Ardmore 1997 KWM Cask 5564

by Evan

Merry Christmas and happy holiday’s everyone! Today marks the last dram in our 25 Drample-long journey through the KWM 2024 Not An Advent Calendar. I hope you have enjoyed your whisky journey as much as I enjoy writing this posts and Andrew and I enjoy hosting the recap tastings!

I hope you have found some new favourites along the way. I know I have! Here is my personal top 5:

  • Compass Box Flaming Heart 2022 – This is such a well balanced and complex peated dram. I will be said when it eventually leaves our shelves for good!
  • Nikka From The Barrel – This is the least expensive bottle in the entirety of this year’s Not An Advent Calendar, but it is great regardless of how Japanese it is or is not.
  • Ardnamurchan AD/11:16 KWM Cask – I love the quirky combination of fruit and smoke and creamy goodness.
  • That Boutique-Y Speyside #4 24-Year-Old KWM Cask – This has to be the most understated whisky in this year’s lineup, but the soft waxiness and orchard fruit notes that it offers are incredibly enticing.
  • Berry's Blended Malt #1 1999 – If only we had more of this to sell. I love this blend, even without knowing what it is made up of. Like the Nikka From The Barrel: Whatever it is, it is good!

What are your personal favourites? What would you change about the Not An Advent Calendar and the tastings for next year? If you have any questions or comments on this, you can contact me here. I cannot promise that all criticisms will be addressed, but we do love to hear what people have enjoyed and what they have not. We always make this calendars and chose the lineup based on what we are excited to share with others.

Before I get all sappy about that, and then end of things to taste in these boxes, let's talk about our very last dram. Say hello to the G&M CC Ardmore 1997 KWM Cask 5564!

Ardmore Distillery was founded in 1898, and since the beginning, its focus has been on peated whisky production. The Highland distillery was purpose-built to provide whisky for blending, as pretty much all distilleries were at the time. However, with Ardmore that hasn't changed much — even today, just about all of Ardmore's production is still being used for blending, trading stock, or selling. Ardmore features prominently in the Teacher’s Highland Cream Blended Scotch Whisky, as it has since its inception.

Only a small portion of the distillery’s Single Malt Scotch lands in official bottles released by Ardmore and its parent company Suntory. One of the reasons Ardmore is the heart of Teacher's Highland Cream and also sought after by independent bottlers is that just about all whisky produced at the distillery is moderately peated. I have only tasted one unpeated Ardmore that I can recall. There is also a lighter-peated style that the distillery makes which is sometimes dubbed Ardlair. I suspect some of the Ardmore I have tasted have been this style, which tends to amp up the sweet, creamy and fruity notes of the whisky.

Unfortunately, the official bottlings of Ardmore I have tasted leave a lot to be desired and, in my opinion, do not at all accurately represent what the distillery is capable of. Two factors play a role in this:

  • They are all young and mostly non-age stated — except for the Ardmore Port Wood Finish which has yet to have come to Canada from what I can see.
  • They are bottled at low ABV, often at the bare minimum 40% ABV like the Ardmore Legacy. This watered-down level does not show Ardmore well at all in my opinion. It ends up smelling like wet and smoky cardboard.

Suntory seems to treat Ardmore as the red-headed stepchild in its Scotch Whisky portfolio. When it comes to profile and releases, Bowmore and Laphroaig get plenty of attention, being the Islay darlings that they are. Auchentoshan in the Lowlands gets a similarly prolific treatment. Even Glen Garioch gets more single malt releases and attention, and that is saying something!

Enough of that and back to this specific Ardmore Bottle. Andrew and a few of the other whisky staff are – shall we say – not huge fans of Ardmore’s peated, farmy, and malt-driven style. It is often treated with near as much ire and derision as bottlings of Ledaig are around here. That being said, this bottling is surprisingly the 4th single cask of Ardmore we have selected and had bottled for the store from I can recall.

The other Ardmore KWM casks we have selected over the years were typically on the younger side. They showed both great value and a bold peaty style that could be forgiven for its impetuousness due to youth. We have all been fond of a few 1997 and 1998 Ardmore we have tasted from Gordon & MacPhail over the years. They have ranged from big, heavy sherry to lighter refill sherry casks in style, but each one has been fantastic. When we received a sample of this eventually KWM cask, Andrew especially was blown away.

(Above — A random Calgary Flames Fan discusses and tastes the G&M Connoisseurs Choice Ardmore 1997 KWM Cask 5564)

Gordon & MacPhail Connoisseurs Choice Ardmore 1997 KWM Cask 5564 – 25-Year-Old – 50.3%

“The staff at KWM are divided on Ardmore generally speaking, but never on Ardmore from a Gordon & MacPhail sherry cask! This 1997 vintage Ardmore was matured for a quarter of a century in an active Refill Sherry Cask, and bottled at 50.3%. It was selected by and bottled exclusively for your humble whisky drudges at KWM!”

Evan’s Tasting Note

Nose: Molasses, dark chocolate, a fresh coat of varnish on old church pews, cigar box, wafting smoke, big malt and cereal notes, dates, raisins, roasted hazelnuts, leather driving gloves, and the interior of a new car.

Palate: Full, rich, and even concentrated in style with notes of polished oak, caramelized demerara sugar, orange rind, cloves, dark chocolate, a touch of espresso, and more dates and roasted hazelnuts.

Finish: Fruit leather, dark chocolate, and cigar smoke stick around for a good, long while.

Comment: The big sherry and leather notes dominate the smoke on this Ardmore, but there is still plenty of malt holding its ground in this as well. A fantastic older Ardmore!

Andrew's Tasting Note

Nose: deep, dark, elegant, and fruity with a touch of smoke; it starts with chocolate: milk chocolate and Caramilk; soft leather, loose leaf tobacco, and cold tea dregs with Demerara sugar; soft new leather chairs, old Armagnac in comically large snifters, and a touch of cigar smoke though it is a fairly well-ventilated room; teriyaki beef jerky, ginger beef, and bacon dipped in dark chocolate; stewed and dried dark fruits, but also straying into the tropical.

Palate: simply stunning old-school sherry with a touch of peat; it starts with chocolate, rolls into tobacco, and then building spice, before the fruits and meatier tones have a go; more ginger beef, teriyaki beef jerky, and bacon dipped in chocolate (from our neighbour Peasant Cheese); cooked raisins, dried figs, and something like mincemeat-esque; Cuban cigars and 30 year old Armagnac; both milk and dark chocolate with a range of spices from sweet to hot; eucalyptus and Halls mentholyptus; big citrus tones, verging into more tropical fruits like mango and papaya; and then there is the smoke which is clean, elegant, almost ethereal.

Finish: long, fresh, and sherried with a nice balance of smoke, sweet and savoury; simply gorgeous.

Comment: our Glentauchers 2000, which came in at the same time, is good, really good to be fair, but this 25 year old Ardmore, one of the oldest casks we've ever bottled, is exceptional; this is quite simply the best Ardmore I have ever had, it is superlative!

It is always sad when good things come to an end, but hopefully, you have enjoyed this shared whisky journey. And hopefully, you will consider joining us once again next Advent!

Thank you for reading, and happy holidays!
-Evan

Playing catch-up on our 2024 This Is Not An Advent Calendar?

You can find the rest of the blog posts here!

This entry was posted in Whisky, Tastings, Whisky Calendars, Distillery, Independent Bottler, Tastings - Online Tasting, KWM Single Cask, KWM 2024 Not An Advent Calendar Tastings

 

 

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